Abstract
We study the diffraction of neutral hydrogen atoms through suspended single-layer graphene using molecular dynamics simulations based on density functional theory. Although the atoms have to overcome a transmission barrier, we find that the de Broglie wave function for H at 80 eV has a high probability to be coherently transmitted through about 18% of the graphene area, contrary to the case of He. We propose an experiment to realize the diffraction of atoms at the natural hexagon lattice period of 246 pm, leading to a more than 400-fold increase in beam separation of the coherently split atomic wave function compared to diffraction experiments at state-of-the art nano-machined masks. We expect this unusual wide coherent beam splitting to give rise to novel applications in atom interferometry.
Highlights
15 March 2019Christian Brand , Maxime Debiossac, Toma Susi , François Aguillon, Jani Kotakoski , Philippe Roncin and Markus Arndt
De Broglie’s seminal hypothesis on the wave-particle duality of massive matter [1] has been corroborated by numerous famous experiments, starting with pioneering studies using electrons [2, 3], neutrons [4], helium [5], and atomic [6] and molecular hydrogen [5] diffracted at single crystals
Sizable electronic excitation is predicted, the results indicate that coherent diffraction through single-layer graphene is feasible, leading to widely separated coherent beams of atomic hydrogen
Summary
Christian Brand , Maxime Debiossac, Toma Susi , François Aguillon, Jani Kotakoski , Philippe Roncin and Markus Arndt.
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